Why Do We Carve Pumpkins on Halloween?
Most holidays have a very distinctive look and feel, almost like a brand kit. The Fourth of July is all about red, white & blue, fireworks and hot dogs. St. Patrick’s Day is the color green, shamrocks and leprechauns. Halloween is Black & Orange colors, ghosts, anything scary, candy and pumpkins. One Halloween activity that stands out from the rest is carving pumpkins, followed closely by going trick or treating. While there have been quite a few advances in pumpkin carving, the basic concept remains the same. Some pumpkins become smiling faces with crooked teeth. Others turn into monsters, movie characters or impressively detailed works of art. Some are carved, some are painted and some expert level carvers even pull out a dremel. But before the jack-o’-lantern became a decoration, the tradition involved something a little less exciting. The turnip was the original vegetable of choice.
In Ireland and Scotland, people hollowed out turnips and other root vegetables and gave them frightening faces. They popped a candle inside and created a mini lantern with a scary face. These lanterns were associated with Halloween and were technically used to ward off wandering spirits. One famous story connected to the custom is the Irish legend of “Stingy Jack.”
According to the tale, Jack repeatedly tricked the Devil. When Jack died, he was refused entry into heaven, but the Devil would not take him either. Instead, Jack was left to wander in the darkness with a burning coal, which he placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to light his way.
He became known as “Jack of the Lantern,” which was eventually shortened to just “jack-o’-lantern.” It is a folk story, with a bunch of different versions, rather than a documented account of how someone invented the first Halloween decoration. As with a lot of these kinds of old stories, it was probably based on a diluted version that changed over time. Maybe there was a guy who just needed a little lantern to walk through the woods and could only find a turnip. It’s usually impossible to really find out the real details of a story like this.
The pumpkin replaced the turnip when the tradition can to North America. Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their lantern customs and stories with them and pumpkins offered a practical alternative. They were plentiful, larger and easier to hollow out than a hard turnip. Anyone who has struggled to cut through a thick pumpkin can appreciate that the earlier version required even more effort.
Over time, pumpkin lanterns became closely tied to American Halloween celebrations. By the early 1900s, they were an established symbol of the holiday. Their purpose shifted toward seasonal fun, decorations and a little harmless mischief. Most people who haven’t actually tried to find out why we carve pumpkins for Halloween probably don’t have any idea that the harmless decoration was originally used to keep evil spirits away.
Today, you see all kinds of carved pumpkins as you walk through neighborhoods. It is a fun Halloween activity for kids & adults and offers a fun way to decorate for Halloween. Even better, the use of pumpkins around Halloween has created an even better thing to do during the Holiday season. Visiting a pumpkin patch is a great way to spend the day and the pumpkin patches all over the Bay Area offer a whole lot more than just a field of pumpkins. Places like spinda farms have hayrides, corn mazes and a whole field of cool dinosaurs for kids to enjoy. You could just head to Safeway to snag a pumpkin, but if you have the time, you should definitely head to a pumpkin patch.
